Considers the public nature of charter schools, comparing Michigan charter school reformers' rhetoric with that of 19th century common school reformers, noting the conflicting definitions of what constitutes public schooling and suggesting that charter schools frame education principally as a consumer good, thus privatizing the purpose of public…

The work of Jurgen Habermas is often cited in adult educational literature as underpinning dialogic traditions and practices central to the field. But to many adult educators the density of Habermas's analysis and complexity of his language limit his influence on their practice. This article's intent is to render a comprehensive analysis of the…

This article briefly characterizes a "deliberative democratic" approach to program evaluation, recounts its application to the evaluation of school choice policy in the Boulder Valley School District, and describes the results and recommendations of the evaluation. It then assesses the evaluation in terms of its role in stimulating…

Examines John Dewey's vision of and concerns for democratic education, arguing that his approach failed to equip students to act effectively in the world as it was (and still is) and that his model of democracy, while extremely useful, is nonetheless inadequate to serve the varied needs of students living in a diverse and contentious society. (SM)

Uses the authors' experiences with a professional development project to propose a model of teacher community, describing the challenge of negotiating the essential tension of teacher community and the challenge of maintaining diverse perspectives within a social group. A model of the markers of community formation as manifested in participants'…

Rejects the essentialist notion of the need to exclude children with disabilities from the school community, tracing the origin of disability segregation to the advent of western colonialism and demonstrating the symbiotic relationship between cultural and racial oppression and the oppression of people with disabilities. The paper strongly…

In attempting to guide both researchers and the federal government in the development of a stronger scientific culture for education research, the National Research Council report, Scientific Research in Education, falls short in its conception of research dissemination. Rather than considering the potential of new publishing technologies to…

This study investigates the ways in which 150 Ghanaian junior secondary students negotiate the tensions between ethnic and national history in building conceptions of democratic citizenship. While unofficial histories operate in Ghana, and some of these may be oppositional, the students in this study do not describe their own or others' ethnic…

Recognizing the increasingly racially and ethnically diverse politically disengaged population along with the central role of schools in preparing democratic citizens, this study investigated how 3 skilled secondary social studies teachers taught about and for multicultural democracy to prepare students for active and effective citizenship through…

Schools in Arthurdale (West Virginia), a New Deal resettlement community for displaced coal miners, made landmark efforts to bring Deweyan ideals of progressive education to bear on community life. The article examines Arthurdale's pedagogy and history in order to illuminate ambiguities of educators' efforts to promote community, emphasizing…

President Clinton's human capital agenda emphasizes efforts to ensure the future strength of the United States economy by investing in education and training citizens. The paper describes the agenda and the legislation it shaped, focusing on K-12 reforms and the changing federal role in education. (Author/SM)